Roger Garaudy - Dismembered by Nickglais

I wrote these notes over ten years ago on Roger Garaudy - given that his death has been announced, I thought it suitable to make them public.

Nickglais


Roger Garaudy in the 1950's and 1960's was the leading ideological spokesman for the French Communist Party. He launched the Anti-Stalin philosophical campaign by the French Communist Party on July 14 1962 at a meeting of Communist Philosophers and Historians etc. He was also a communist Deputy in the French Assembly and director of the Centre d'etudes et de recherches marxistes..

Garaudy  and  Lenin
Listen to Evaldi llyenkov on Roger Garaudy in 1979

"Thus the French revisionist philosopher Roger Garaudy (he is neither the only one nor the first) in his booklet Lenin condescendingly acknowledges the services of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism in presenting the fundamentals of materialism in general, which are neither characteristic of Marxist materialism nor related in any way to dialectics; this, he says, is 'kindergarten materialism' and nothing more.

Lenin supposedly first became interested in dialectics only later – at the time of the Philosophical Notebooks. The same thing was confirmed by still another representative of philosophical revisionism – Gayo Petrovic from 'Praxis', who added that the study of Hegel's works forced Lenin to introduce substantial corrections in his characterisation of materialism, idealism and dialectics, forced him to seriously limit the activity of the principle of reflection (such is the way that he explains Lenin's sentence: 'man's consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but also creates it'), etc., etc.

This statement already represents a direct lie with regard not only to Lenin's understanding of materialism, but also to Lenin's understanding of dialectics.

In essence, such an incorrect interpretation of Lenin's position also serves as the basis of statements according to which the definition of matter developed in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism is justified only by the special conditions of the argument with one of the varieties of subjective idealism, and therefore is declared to be insufficient, incomplete and incorrect beyond the bounds of this argument. Hence far-reaching conclusions are frequently drawn about the need to 'broaden' or 'supplement' Lenin's definition of matter and the philosophical conception of materialism (as supposedly narrowly epistemological) by means of the so-called 'ontological aspect'.

The meaning of similar attempts is the same: to portray Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, this classic work on the philosophy of dialectical materialism, which elucidated in general form all the major contours and problems of this science, as a book devoted only to one 'side of the matter', only to 'epistemology', only to that supposedly narrow circle of problems which were thrust on Lenin by the specific conditions of a polemic with one of the minor schools of subjective idealism.

Explained in such a way, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism is robbed of its general philosophical significance beyond the bounds of this special argument; the significance is lost of a book which completely exposes every kind of idealism, not only and exclusively subjective idealism.

All this and much else forces us once again to return to an analysis of Lenin's polemic with the empirio-critics in order better to understand the actual reasons behind its origin and hence its actual meaning, its essence and significance for the ensuing history of the ideological and theoretical struggle in the ranks of Russian and international Social Democracy; we will better understand its significance for contemporary disagreements. arguments and ideological struggles, since only in such a broad context will the 'philosophical subtleties' which are dealt with in the book become clear".

For the details of llyenkov's postion on "Materialism amd Empiro-Criticism" read :" llyenkov's Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism."

Garaudy and Teilhard de Chardin

Roger Garaudy in his book Perspectives on Man claims the three main curents of French thought, Catholicism,existentialism and marxism are engaged in a common effort to grasp man in a totality and he seeks to emphasise their postive covergence using increasely Hegelian as opposed to Marxist terminology..

It is true as Garaudy pointed out that Chardin recognised certain dialectical charateristics in the process of evolution, such as univeral inter-connection and the recripocal action of all things etc but his idea of Teilhard de Chardin's idea of centrocomplexity of an Omega point where man and God merge are irrecocilable with dialectical materialism.

Garaudy and Islam.

By 1982 Roger Garaudy had given up trying to reconcile Marxism with Catholicism and rejected both and became a muslim convert and changed his name to Ragaa and went to live in Spain.

The lesson to be drawn from Roger Garaudy is that the anti-Stalin revisionist campaign of the French Communist Party in philosophy opened  the doors to a non-class humanism, which Louis Althusser recognised but failed to defeat, this could only lead to the reinstatement of the Godseekers whether Catholic or Muslim.

It is no accident that it was Roger Garaudy's misrepresentation of Lenin's work Materialism and Empiro-Criticism the classic exposure of the "Godseekers: Bogdanov and Lunacharsky as explained by llyenkov that opened the foodgates to fideism as Lenin would say. .